Máté Vass

I investigate the fate of microbes - who persists, who disappears, and who re-emerges - as aquatic communities assemble and mix under global change (e.g., climate warming and emerging pollutants).

My research is structured around three main pillars: (1) multiscale metacommunity ecology, (2) community coalescence, and (3) dormancy. By studying how microbial communities interact and reorganize when previously separated systems merge, my goal is to understand how species and genes can be introduced, maintained, or diluted across environments. In particular, community coalescence events - such as wastewater inputs into natural waterbodies - represent key moments for horizontal gene transfer and the redistribution of antibiotic resistance factors.

Using data-driven approaches, I uncover and predict the ecological and evolutionary processes shaping biodiversity across scales, from genes to ecosystems. This includes tracking the persistence and mobility of genetic elements associated with antimicrobial resistance (AMR), as well as identifying the environmental conditions that promote their spread or suppression. Ultimately, my work contributes to a more predictive understanding of how global change may influence the environmental reservoirs and transmission pathways of AMR.

Ongoing projects:

• DISCOMIX: Dissemination of antimicrobial resistance by community mixing events (Swedish Research Council: Starting Grant, 4.4MSEK, PI) – 2025-2029
• BEDDCAPD: Beyond ´Everywhere´: Disentangling Dispersal Constraints of Aquatic Planktonic Diversity (Swedish Research Council: Project Grant, 4.16MSEK, co-PI) – 2025-2029

PhD student:

• Merjan Koşucu – "Dispersal Constraints and Their Role in Shaping Inland Aquatic Biodiversity" (SLU, 2025–, co-supervisor)

MSc student:

• Felix Blomfelt – "Antibiotic Resistance Mutations in Aquatic Plastisphere Microbiomes" (Chalmers, 2025, main supervisor)

I'm currently looking for a motivated postdoc interested in developing a proposal for a postdoctoral scholarship from the Carl Trygger Foundation (see details: https://www.carltryggersstiftelse.se/this-is-the-carl-trygger-foundation). The research should focus on tracking strain-level eco-evolutionary changes during coalescence of aquatic bacterial communities. Feel free to contact me, if you are interested!

Community coalescence in aquatic ecosystems

• Microeukaryote community coalescence strengthens community stability and elevates diversity, FEMS Microbiology Ecology
• Microbial hitchhikers on microplastics: The exchange of aquatic microbes across distinct aquatic habitats, Environmental Microbiology
• Warming mediates the resistance of aquatic bacteria to invasion during community coalescence, Molecular Ecology

Antimicrobial resistance

• Antimicrobial resistance dissemination via horizontal gene transfer is constrained in stratified waters, Communications Biology
• Towards One Health action for addressing antimicrobial resistance in the age of polycrisis, Nature Sustainability

• Independent researcher, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, 2025–present
• Postdoctoral researcher at Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, 2023–2025
• Postdoctoral researcher at Umeå University, Sweden, 2021–2023
• PhD in Biology at Uppsala University, Sweden, 2015–2020
• MSc and BSc in Environmental science, University of Pannonia, Hungary, 2009–2015